Posts Tagged ‘patient care’
A Typical Day in the ER – Patient Faking a Seizure
Sometimes patients will arrive in the ER triage and you know they are not really sick, and they have an agenda. Unfortunately many times it is to acquire drugs. Sometimes the same person will come over and over again for the same reason, but with a different ailment each time.
Sometimes these people require confrontation by a physician to get them to realize their efforts are not going to work, but other times it is just too funny and there really is nothing that can be done. If you come to an emergency room with a specific complaint you WILL be worked up and treated for what is found related to that complaint. If nothing is found, all your testing is normal, then you will not be treated.
The following is just a funny (or maybe not) video someone on YouTube put together to typify these kinds of folks that visit ER’s habitually.
Strange…Butt True
This story is going to be hard to believe as true. But I am telling you it is!! So just read with a bit tolerance. And remember there is nothing more entertaining than the truth of human nature.
I was a new graduate and a little gullible, admittedly so. I was in my first job after graduation. And I was ready to make a difference. I wanted to help everyone. I believed anything… I cared.
In the small town that I trained there was a federal prison that was contracted with my hospital for patient care. I was on duty the night they brought in a male prisoner onto my unit with complaints of abdominal pain. Needless to say I was a little intimidated.
But he was a patient first, a prisoner second. I was determined to give him the care he needed. Of course they did all the usual tests and it was discerned that he was constipated. Worse yet, he was impacted with hard stool and the treatment was to manually disimpact him. All the medical people reading this, knows what that entails. Everyone else, I had to stick my finger up his rectum and pull out the hard feces….really.
I couldn’t believe it either…
But I was young, new and out to save humanity. I had a job to do and I was going to do it.
So I went into the patient. He was a very large tattooed bear of a man. Did I mention he was huge? Really scary. And unusually quiet. He did not respond to any attempts on my part to engage him in conversation. This was really okay with me since I was actually quite frightened.
I explained to the patient what it was I needed to do for him. He accepted the information and said for me to go ahead and do it. I proceeded to perform the procedure and received the shock of my life and to this day, 40 years later, has not been matched by any other experience.
I pulled from his bottom a hundred dollar bill!! And after that, more money… twenties, tens, fives and more hundreds. One bill after another, I was shocked. I didn’t know what to do. Should I tell him?
Well of course, he had to know they were there, so I told him what I had found. He asked me how much I had found so far, I quickly added it up and he said to keep going, I hadn’t gotten it all yet.
Really? Are you kidding me?
So I kept going…
To the tune of $5,460! Yep! More than $5,000. And you know what? He was a really nice man.
He told me why he had to go to prison. He had killed his wife’s lover. It was considered a crime of passion and he was probably able to be rehabilitated. And he was a model prisoner. (Which I learned from the guard that was outside his hospital room door the entire time he was in the hospital). He was more talkative now, He wanted to know what I was going to do with the money. I explained it was his money, I was going to give it back to him. But I strongly recommended he not put it back where I had found it, since his abdominal pain that had now been relieved would return. Also he was potentially going to rupture his bowel and the complications could include death. He agreed a new plan was needed.
I rinsed all the money in the bathroom sink and dried it with the paper towels and rolled it all up in a money roll and gave it back to him. He was very grateful and very sweet about it. He promised he would find a new place to keep his money.
I never said anything to the guard. In my mind, it was none of his business.
However, I just had to ask my patient why he had the money in his butt. He bashfully answered and said he didn’t have anywhere else to hide it and he was so big and mean looking that none of the little hoodlums would be brave or strong enough to try to sodomize him.
Well… I asked!
